Blaise® [see http://www.cbs.nl/en/service/blaise/introduction.htm] is a computer-assisted interviewing (CAI) system and survey processing tool for the Windows® operating system. The system was developed by Statistics Netherlands and has been designed for use in official statistics. It is available to National Statistical Institutes and related research institutes. C2B (CentERdata to Browser) [see http://www.uvt.nl/centerdata/en] is an add-on to the Blaise product which facilitates publication of a Blaise questionnaire to the Internet. using a ‘standard’ Blaise questionnaire. CASES [see http://cases.berkeley.edu] is a software package for collecting survey data based on structured questionnaires in both governmental and private sectors. Survent [see: http:/www.cfmc.com] is a system for computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) which provides complete capabilities for designing, administering, and managing all of the complexities of sophisticated telephone-based research operations. SPSS [see http://www.spss.com] is a statistical software package for analyzing numeric data and for producing graphical representations of data.
These and other known survey tools typically utilize proprietary structures and programming languages that are relatively complex for the limited functionality which they support. Thus the programmer and the researcher have only limited control over the survey design, and only limited capability for analyzing the results and possible modifications to the questionnaire design as the survey is being conducted. Moreover, especially for large, recurring surveys involving many questions and many participants, relatively large development times are required, translation of the survey text into other languages is cumbersome, and the survey documentation is not presented in a format which is understandable to other than a trained programmer having extensive experience with that particular programming language.